


we’ll be good old bedtime stories (give you nightmares 'til you die)

by control



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Cody-centric, Force Bond (Star Wars), Introspection, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Permanent Injury, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), cody as vader's sleeper agent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 18:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/control/pseuds/control
Summary: Vader finds CC-2224 by the will of the Force.Cody wakes up three years after the end of the war, alone and injured and burning with the knowledge that his General is still alive.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	we’ll be good old bedtime stories (give you nightmares 'til you die)

**Author's Note:**

> wanted to post this before star wars officially decides what happened to our guy, and [commander cody week 2021](https://commandercodyweek.tumblr.com/) seemed as good an excuse as any! the day 6 prompt is "alternate universe," but make sure to check out all of the other incredible cody content folks have made on the event blog <3
> 
> no update schedule, so manage expectations accordingly :D

There were clones on this base.

After three years, Vader could pick out their presence easily enough; their minds were far from the blank stillness of droids in the Force, but they didn’t have the same patterns to their thoughts that most sentients did. Chipped clones fell somewhere in the middle, between sentient and synthetic, a muted existence that was very obvious if one knew what to look for. Vader certainly did; he preferred them to the loud, unrestrained natural-borns that made up an increasing number of the Empire’s fighting force, and it was a preference he’d passed on to several of his Inquisitors.

All things considered, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, seeing that particular designation again. The burning anger that those two letters and four numbers evoked was ever-familiar. After all, if this clone had done his job, Vader wouldn’t have lost everything: his Angel would still be alive and at his side, their child with them, his Master dead and their Empire thriving.

CC-2224 had always been better than him: higher-ranked, more competent, more trusted, more compatible, more reliable. But when it had come down to it, when they’d been faced with the same mission—the same test—they had both failed in the exact same way, and Obi-Wan Kenobi had walked away the victor.

Did this clone even know that he had failed? That his failure had cost Vader everything in his life worth living for?

The machinery in the operating theatre Vader had commandeered for this particular visit creaked in warning, and Vader shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. He wasn’t here to relive old memories; the Force had finally seen fit to show him a way to repay those old debts, but he wouldn’t get anywhere if he couldn’t control himself long enough to actually see it done. Vader had never been particularly partial to _slow_ or _careful_ , but in this one instance he was looking forward to savoring every moment of his revenge.

The door slid open behind him, and Vader turned silently.

“CC-2224, sir,” the med-droid informed him, gliding aside to allow the gurney to be wheeled inside the operating theatre.

Vader stood in silence for a long moment, scrutinizing every feature of the body beneath that faceless armor, cracked and battered from the attack that had landed him on Vader’s radar in the first place. The few intact plates were dripping with condensation from the cryo-stasis pod that he’d been delivered in.

“Remove his helmet,” Vader ordered finally.

The droid moved to comply, lifting the helmet to reveal that all-too-familiar face, brown skin tinged grey with a lack of sunlight, dark hair minimally streaked with silver and clipped tight in the same regulation cut the clone had worn the entire time Vader had known him, that faded scar curling against his eye.

Vader exhaled, careful. “What are his injuries?”

“Fractured lumbar vertebrae, possible spinal cord damage. Both fibulas shattered. Broken left tibia and patella. Heavy contusions concentrated on the left side of the body. Internal bleeding, broken ribs,” the droid listed off. “There are more,” it offered, but Vader waved it off, moving closer to examine the clone. The black armor was charred and badly broken, cutting into his skin in some places and fused to it in others. It was little wonder his medical file had recommended termination over treatment; even with the best medical care in the galaxy, it was unlikely this clone would be fit for the intensive fieldwork of a Purge Trooper ever again.

“Fix him,” Vader ordered.

The droid wheeled back in surprise. “This trooper is marked for termination.”

“Fix him,” Vader said again. “I need this clone as functional as you can make him. Spare no expense.”

“It will be done,” the droid said. “Will you be supervising the procedures?”

Vader considered it. “Yes,” he decided. “You will tell me exactly what you do to him.”

“As you wish,” the droid agreed, wheeling over to plug into the terminal on the other side of the room.

Vader moved to stand against the wall, out of the way of the incoming surgeon droid and all of its tools. He closed his eyes behind the mask, reaching out in the Force to feel the engineered blankness of the clone’s mind even under the heavy sedation. He surfaced briefly, watching as the droids began removing the clone’s armor with painstaking care, to deliver one final order: “Remove his control chip, once you have finished.”

“It will be done,” the surgeon droid told him.

Vader shut his eyes, satisfied. He would grant the clone the freedom of a removed chip, and the comfort of the scar to prove it. It would only make his revenge that much sweeter. He reached again for the Force. The procedure would likely be a long and arduous process, but he would need the time to ensure his own modifications would take. He breathed in deeply, let the filtered air sit in his damaged lungs until they burned, and began weaving his compulsion around the clone’s mind.

Cody startled awake, wrenching upwards before a sharp, stabbing pain in his middle halted his progress and knocked the breath out of him.

Slowly, he lowered himself back down to rest against the plush, mossy ground and simply _breathed_ for a moment, willing himself to push past the sharp pain that seemed to be pulsing through every part of his battered body. He took stock of each limb, carefully tensing and releasing his muscles to confirm that everything was still attached and in working order before pushing himself back up, slowly.

He was panting by the time he’d made it to sitting, back resting against the trunk of a tree and legs splayed out in front of him, but at least now he wasn’t completely vulnerable. Though he doubted he’d be even remotely effective should he need to defend himself, given how completely wiped he was from just _moving_.

He was still on the last planet he remembered being, if the thick green forest and colorful underbrush and the bustling port visible from his vantage point were any indication. It would have been a relief if not for the fact that he also remembered, vividly, going down with the bone-deep knowledge that he would never be getting back up again.

He was supposed to be _dead_.

Instead, he was sitting on the ground in the forest outside of the settlement where he’d been leading a squad of Purge troopers, in pain and breathless with it. His armor was missing, his blaster gone, and—

He’d known that he’d been altered in some way at the end of the war, the chip in his head fogging up his natural brain processes to some extent, but it had been three years since the last time his head had been truly _his_. The change was almost intolerable; Cody could understand why troopers whose chips had malfunctioned were always slated for immediate termination.

He managed to turn his head enough that the vomit landed mostly next to him instead of on his flightsuit, and his ribs and spine protested the heaving of his gut. His head was pounding, as well, from overstimulation both inside and out; he could count on one hand the times he’d spent outside of his bucket in the past three years.

They’d come here to hunt and kill Jedi, Cody and his squad, and they’d found a pair of them hiding in plain sight in the village. Corellians, and young, but without an Inquisitor there to even the odds Cody’s troopers hadn’t stood a chance even before the villagers had rigged the entire building to explode on top of them. After all, Cody might have had three years of experience tracking light-side stragglers, but at this point those who were still left had the same amount of experience escaping. The villagers, for their part, had probably been pleased to learn that plastoid armor boasted the same vulnerabilities regardless of whether it bore the crest of the Empire or the Republic.

Cody _remembered_ being caught in the explosion—the sickening _crunch_ of the bones in his left leg shattering under the weight of the collapsing building, the unforgettable stench of burning plastoid, shouting for his men to get clear even as he fought to stay conscious himself—and yet he was sitting here, against all odds, mostly intact and in far too much pain to be dead.

_And_ the explosion had knocked the chip in his head loose.

It was certainly telling of the last few years of his life that all of these things together felt like a minor miracle, but for the first time in— his _life_ , Cody realized, letting his head fall back against the tree, he was possibly _free_. However it had happened, whichever villager had taken pity on him and pulled him from the rubble—and Cody was certain they had the resources to fix him up; the GAR had only ever deployed one battalion to this planet, entire platoons summarily destroyed by local Separatist resistance before they’d been forced to evacuate without their supplies—had given him that.

It was enough to make his head spin, although that could have been the injuries, or the malfunctioning chip, or the fresh air and dappled sunlight gracing his skin for the first time in years.

Maybe he would just… rest here, a moment. He was well-hidden, and without his armor or weapons there was nothing to identify him; even three years had changed him enough that he no longer looked like any of the wartime GAR propaganda holos.

Cody shut his eyes, tilting his head back to rest it against the trunk of the tree. He drifted, letting his breathing fall into the pattern he’d perfected in quiet moments drifting through hyperspace on star destroyers, and as he explored the newly-recovered depths of his mind he became aware of a thread he’d long thought severed by his own hand. Curious, only half awake, he gave it a lazy tug, vaguely surprised to feel it taut and anchored on the other end, and then he was asleep.

Ben Kenobi surfaced from his morning meditation in the Dune Sea with a gasp.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm also on [on tumblr](https://consolecowboy.tumblr.com/) <3


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